Some of Bedfordshire’s oldest pubs and hotels, including The Swan in Leighton Buzzard, feature in a new handbook spotlighting the UK’s most historic watering holes.
Ye Olde Good Inn Guide is billed as a ‘Tudor traveller’s guide to the best taverns in the land’ and has been published by The History Press.
And as well as providing an amazing insight into the drinking customs of 16th century England, it explores the fascinating history of the country’s most ancient hostelries – many of which still survive today.
Other pubs and inns which feature in the book, researched by authors James Moore and Paul Nero, is The Rose in Bedford, The Swan Hotel in Bedford, and the White Hart Hotel in Ampthill.
James Moore said: “Bedfordshire has a rich heritage of historic pubs and inns. Our book helps you find the nation’s best hostelries and reveals their incredible history – as well as providing some great tales to share with your fellow drinkers along the way.”
“The Tudor period was the golden age of the alehouse and inn. Our guide allows you to step back into the world of Shakespeare and Elizabeth I to enjoy a drink in atmospheric places which they may very well have frequented themselves.”
“At a time when 18 pubs are closing a week it has never been more important to preserve the history of those which have often served their communities for centuries.”
For more information visit historicpubguide.com .
Ten Fascinating Facts about Drinking in Tudor Times
1.In Elizabethan times there were around 20,000 inns alehouse, taverns and inns about 1 for every 200 inhabitants, many more than today.
2. Binge drinking was a problem then as now – in 1552 alehouses had to get a licence for the first time as: “intolerable hurts and troubles to the common wealth of this realm doth daily grow and increase through such abuses and disorders as are had and used in common alehouses.” Thomas Wolsey, later the unfortunate Cardinal Wolsey, was once put in the stocks for being drunk.
3. Hopped beer replaced ale as the fashion, but in 1560 Queen Elizabeth complained of: “a kynde of very strong bere calling the same doble doble beer which they do commonly utter and sell at very grate and excessive pryce.”
4. Names of the strongest brews included mad dog and dagger ale.
5. Smoking was new with 7000 tobacco shops in London alone - but the habit was frowned upon, then as now. But in Tudor times it was because of the fire risk.
6. Alehouse keeper’s sometimes kept a football - but the Tudor game was much more violent and could end in death.
7. Beer consumption in Tudor England was as much as 17 pints a week as revealed from documents from Coventry in 1520.
8. William Shakespeare’s father John was an ale-conner. This was the man whose duty it was to test the quality of brews by donning leather breeches, pouring the ale on a bench and sitting in it. If the trousers stuck to the bench it was deemed off.
9. Punishments for being drunk could include having to wear a drunkard’s cloak, a hollowed out beer barrel.
10. In Tudor times many alehouses doubled as brothels.